Oh, snap!

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

School

My school is driving me crazy. Not the school I'm teaching in, but the school I go to. Maybe I should say "school," since is it really a school if you don't learn anything? Really it's just a building into which I am pouring tens of thousands of dollars of money that I have not yet earned. Fabulous.

The reason I'm annoyed is that I'm applying to work at schools out of state, but I still have credits left to take at my school here in the summer. Most schools want me to start in the middle of the summer, but if I do then I won't finish all my credits. And, of course, you can't transfer ANY credits in from another institution. You know, because the education I'm getting in my current courses is so high quality that I wouldn't want to sully my degree with any inferior outside courses. Ugh. I just want to get my degree and get the h out of here.

Seriously, I feel like a second grade student who keeps getting busywork ditto worksheets from the teacher and is bored and appalled. Although my reading level is actually at a third grade level at the moment. But I shouldn't joke, because there are people my age with a third grade reading level. Many of them are high school graduates! Something wrong there I think.

Anyway, I'm looking at schools in Boston, New York, DC...I love the Midwest where I'm from, but it's too early to move back yet. "You can't go home again." Who is that? Tom Wolfe? Sometimes I feel that way because I think I need to accomplish something before I face anyone I used to know. And that really hasn't happened, especially this year! Good lord. It's been such a waste. I might as well have taken a big loan out of a bank in cash, put it all in a pile, and burned it. At least then I would have gotten some heat out of the deal.

I was talking to someone at a job fair who is starting what looks to be a really great school. He was saying that it's going to be hard for me because I don't have enough experience (usually 2 years is what people want) to get into one of these really good charter schools. But I have too much experience to want to work at a DOE school or a crappy charter school. So really I'm screwed. Who knows, maybe someone will take some pity on me. I make a good sad face.

On the flip side, the other school is going well and I'm enjoying myself. It's challenging because the school doesn't really have a unified behavior system, so I'm sort of making one up as I go along. Today in one of my classes, this one kid who is always loud and ridiculous wasn't there, and it was like a whole different experience. During the Do Now, there was total silence. It was shocking. This one kid is really able to affect the whole class negatively. Nothing I've tried with him works. He just has no impulse control, or else doesn't use it. I don't know what to do with him.

Anyway, I'd better go do some work. I have to write a test on the Civil War and Reconstruction. It should be interesting.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Nothing pithy to say

Ummmmmm. My contacts are dried out and I am tired. My friends are at a party, and yet it is Wednesday night. I have just finished my lesson for tomorrow and am relieved. I ate too many potato chips before dinner and now I feel kind of sick. The Diet Coke and York peppermint patty after dinner did not help matters I think. I went to a charter school job fair on Saturday and am afraid that no one will hire me because I don't have enough experience. Some days I wish I had done TFA, but that has its own set of problems. But oh, how everyone loves people from TFA. I am the lonely outsider from a bs graduate school. Well, what can you do. Today I went to the girls' basketball game. This is a small charter middle school, and yet the basketball team is awesome. They haven't lost a game in 3 years. It's entirely because of 3 girls on the team who are amazing. They didn't play in the first half, and by halftime the team was losing 20-10. Midway through the 3rd quarter it was like 22-37. Amazing, these girls. Anyway, I have to go to sleep. Let's all hope for a good tomorrow. That would include my grad school classes being cancelled. Pray for me.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

the weather outside is frightful

Today went really well. It was a lesson on Civil War battles. They were curious about things like bonesaws and digging bodies up to rebury them. Everyone loves that stuff.

I only got up the gumption to write something for 2 reasons:

1) Because I want to complain about having to go to class from 3:20-7 because it suuuucks.

2) It's my mom's birthday and I wanted to send a shout-out! Happy birthday Mom! She's mphmphmm years old. That was her holding her hand over my mouth. Now that she took her hand away, I can tell you that she's over 500 years old. She's actually a Biblical patriarch, and has 800 children. Ha ha just kidding. It doesn't matter how old she is, since she is a beautiful and caring person at any age. Awwwwww................ (Mom--send money)

I don't want to go to class! Maybe there will be an avalanche so I don't have to go. Or God will finally decide to mete out final justice and this whole place will be destroyed with a single bolt of lightning. Or maybe a giant pencil or book. That would be more fitting.